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Cubite’s free 1-Click image installs the Open edX® platform, open-source software for running online courses (an LMS for learners and Studio for course authors), on your own domain with HTTPS. It sets up Verawood, the current Open edX release as of October 2026, with Tutor 22.0.2 on Ubuntu 24.04. Each named Open edX release gets a new image.

Guided setup. The first time you log in as root, a setup wizard asks for your domain, platform name and admin email, checks your DNS records, starts the platform with HTTPS certificates from Let’s Encrypt and creates your admin account. Setup takes about an hour on an 8 GB Basic Droplet.

• Your own secrets, no telemetry: no passwords, keys or default admin account are baked into the image, and each Droplet generates its own. Nothing in the image reports back to Cubite.
• Security fixes: the platform runs Tutor’s LMS and Studio image, rebuilt by Cubite with three upstream Open edX security fixes, two of them rated critical.
• Firewall and updates: a firewall allows only SSH, HTTP and HTTPS, and Ubuntu security updates install automatically.

What you need

• A Droplet with 8 GB of memory and 4 vCPUs.
• A domain with an A record and a wildcard CNAME that point at the Droplet.
• An external SMTP provider for email, because DigitalOcean blocks the standard SMTP ports.

Prefer not to run it yourself? With this image, you apply Open edX and Tutor updates, including each named-release upgrade. Cubite (cubite.io) offers managed Open edX hosting from $1,260/mo for up to 1,000 concurrent learners: a dedicated instance that Cubite builds, hosts and operates. Every managed tier includes daily backups and a quarterly restore rehearsal, SSO (SAML / OIDC) implementation, and named-release upgrades, each upgrade rehearsed on a UAT environment before production.

Founder Amir Tadrisi has worked on Open edX since 2013. Book a free 30-minute call with Amir about managed hosting, a platform you already run, or custom work.

Need a custom feature or integration? Cubite’s custom development and integration work for the Open edX platform is $125/hr.

Support. Cubite builds and supports this image. DigitalOcean does not build or support it. The code that builds it is public on GitHub under the Apache License 2.0. For installer problems, open an issue in that repository (triaged weekly) or email [email protected]. For questions about using the Open edX platform, see the Open edX forum.

Open edX is a registered trademark of edX LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Software Included

Creating an App using the Control Panel

Click the Deploy to DigitalOcean button to create a Droplet based on this 1-Click App. If you aren’t logged in, this link will prompt you to log in with your DigitalOcean account.

Creating an App using the API

In addition to creating a Droplet from the CUBITE 1-Click App using the control panel, you can also use the DigitalOcean API. As an example, to create a 4GB CUBITE Droplet in the SFO2 region, you can use the following curl command. You need to either save your API access token to an environment variable or substitute it in the command below.

curl -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
         -H 'Authorization: Bearer '$TOKEN'' -d \
        '{"name":"choose_a_name","region":"sfo2","size":"s-2vcpu-4gb","image":"cubitetechnologi-cubite-20-04"}' \
        "https://api.digitalocean.com/v2/droplets"

Getting Started After Deploying CUBITE

These steps take you from a new Droplet to a running Open edX® platform with HTTPS.

1. Choose a Droplet size

Use a Droplet with 8 GB of memory and 4 vCPUs, the size Cubite tests. On 4 GB with 2 vCPUs, setup adds a 2 GB swap file and runs slower; that size is not tested. Setup stops on smaller Droplets, because the Open edX database migrations fail with less than 4 GB of memory.

2. Point a domain at the Droplet

The Open edX platform needs a domain name: nothing answers on the Droplet’s IP address until setup has run. At your DNS provider, create these two records, using your own domain instead of learn.example.com:

The wildcard record covers Studio (studio.learn.example.com), the learner apps (apps.learn.example.com) and search (meilisearch.learn.example.com). If your DNS provider can proxy traffic, set both records to DNS only, so that Let’s Encrypt can reach the Droplet. Delete any AAAA (IPv6) record for these names, unless it points at the Droplet’s own IPv6 address. While you do this, the Droplet’s first boot downloads the Open edX images in the background.

3. Log in and follow the setup wizard

ssh root@your_droplet_public_ipv4

The setup wizard starts on its own. It:

• waits for the first boot to finish;
• asks for your LMS domain, your platform name and an admin email address;
• checks your DNS records, and shows the records to create if they are not ready yet;
• generates this Droplet’s own passwords and keys;
• starts the Open edX platform with HTTPS certificates from Let’s Encrypt;
• creates your admin account.

Setup takes up to an hour on an 8 GB Basic Droplet, most of it database setup (58 minutes in Cubite’s test of this image on 2026-10-20); the wizard prints a progress line at least every two minutes. You can stop it at any time and continue later with: openedx-setup. If the connection drops while the platform is starting, the launch keeps running; log in again later and the wizard completes setup.

4. Open your platform

• LMS: https://learn.example.com
• Studio: https://studio.learn.example.com
• Admin user: admin. The password is in /root/.digitalocean_password.

5. Set up email

DigitalOcean blocks SMTP ports 25, 465 and 587, so the platform cannot send account activation, password reset or notification email until you use an external SMTP provider on another port:

tutor config save --set RUN_SMTP=false --set SMTP_HOST=smtp.example.com --set SMTP_PORT=2525 --set SMTP_USERNAME=... --set SMTP_PASSWORD=... --set SMTP_USE_TLS=true
tutor local launch -I

6. Everyday commands

Run Tutor as root:

• tutor local status: list the containers
• tutor local logs -f lms: follow the LMS log
• tutor local restart: restart the platform
• tutor local stop, then tutor local start -d: stop and start the platform

Tutor’s configuration, including this Droplet’s passwords and keys, is in /root/.local/share/tutor/config.yml. Keep a backup of it. The setup logs are in /var/log/cubite-openedx/.

7. Updates

Ubuntu security updates install automatically. Open edX and Tutor updates and security notices are posted on the image’s GitHub page, https://github.com/amirtds/cubite-do-marketplace. To apply a Tutor 22.0.x release:

/opt/tutor/venv/bin/pip install --upgrade "tutor[full]>=22.0.0,<23.0.0"
openedx-image-check
tutor local launch -I

This image runs Cubite’s patched openedx image: Tutor 22.0.2’s image rebuilt with three upstream Open edX security fixes that the Verawood.1 release lacks (GHSA-c6xg-fh3c-vvhh, GHSA-c6fp-f54c-6cv4 and GHSA-g266-6v7f-j465). openedx-image-check keeps it until Tutor’s own image carries the fixes, then moves the Droplet back to Tutor’s image. One of the fixes serves course files with a sandbox policy, so scripts in uploaded HTML or SVG files, JSInput problems included, no longer run. The course waffle flag course_assets.allow_unsafe_asset_rendering turns that off for one course, and reopens the vulnerability for it.

8. Support

Cubite builds and supports this image. DigitalOcean does not build or support it. For installer problems, open an issue at https://github.com/amirtds/cubite-do-marketplace/issues (triaged weekly) or email [email protected]. For questions about using the Open edX platform, see the Open edX forum: https://discuss.openedx.org

Prefer not to run it yourself? Cubite offers managed Open edX hosting from $1,260 a month for up to 1,000 concurrent learners, with named-release upgrades included in every tier, each upgrade rehearsed on a UAT environment before production. Founder Amir Tadrisi has worked on Open edX since 2013. Book a free 30-minute call with Amir about managed hosting, a platform you already run, or custom work.

Need a custom feature or integration? Cubite’s custom development and integration work for the Open edX platform is $125/hr.

Open edX is a registered trademark of edX LLC. All Rights Reserved.